Sustainability

When you think about renewable energy, does a nuclear power plant come to mind? Probably not. But in a roundabout way, Vermont utilities are using nuclear energy to meet the state’s renewable energy standards.

The Marine Stress and Ocean Health Lab at the New England Aquarium looks like your typical laboratory. It’s full of humming and whirring machines, beakers and test tubes, digital scales and centrifuges.

A consortium of Atlantic states fisheries managers is calling for broad changes to the gear lobstermen use, in an effort to reduce risks posed to the endangered North Atlantic right whale and to ward off potential federal action that could be even more challenging for the industry.

A boom in renewable energy around New England has led to higher rates for a small Vermont utility. The reason has to do with the declining value of an energy commodity know as “renewable energy credits.”

ISO New England is in charge of the grid, and they also operate a wholesale electricity market to make sure there’s always power available. It’s a system built on already dizzying complexity, in an energy ecosystem that’s getting more complex, adding new power from renewables all the time.

The latest national climate assessment says forests play a key role in keeping our air clean. According to the report, America’s forests stored the equivalent of 11 percent of the country’s C-O-2 emissions over a 25 year period. That’s because when trees breathe they suck up carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and store that leftover carbon in their trunks. But how scientists determine the amount of carbon stored in a tree is a question open for debate.

Robert Buchsbaum walks into a salt marsh on Boston’s North Shore. Around him towers a stand of bushy-topped Phragmites australis, an invasive plant commonly known as the common reed. Or, as some call it: the all-too-common reed.